Oregon Health Sciences

After begging the people at OHSU to grant me an interview, they finally relented. I received the email, inviting me to interview and I called to schedule it the next day. At that time I was informed that they had two days available: Monday (three days away) and Friday (one week away). This posed a bit of a problem, as I was in Salt Lake City at the time, with no plans to return to Seattle for two weeks. But Oregon was high on my list of programs I was interested in, and I wasn’t ready to give up the opportunity for an interview, so I got to work. I called Delta to see if I could change my ticket. Apparently their call center is located in India, so I got to talk to some very nice people with very weird accents (I think they were trying to speak with American accents, but it wasn’t working very well). Got my ticket to Chicago changed to a ticket to Seattle. Then I checked out Alaska’s fares from Seattle to Chicago. Not too bad, so I bought the ticket.

Sunday after a quick trip up to Park City, Utah to check out the scenery, I flew back to Seattle. Spent a few hours collecting my thoughts, then hopped in my car for the drive to Portland. The hospital complex is located in SW Portland, just south of downtown. It’s built up on the side of a hill, which could make for some tricky driving if it ever gets icy. I really enjoyed my interview there. They seem very interested in helping the residents figure out what they want to do, and allow you to alter your rotations in order to pursue those interests. The residents and other applicants were also very intelligent and interested in learning. That’s not to say the residents at Utah were not intelligent; it’s hard to get this far in medical school without being smart. But in Utah they spoke more of the skiing that was within 30 minutes of the hospital than the training they were getting.

I’m still trying to figure out this whole interview process. It can be quite frustrating if I think about the fact that no matter what programs I like, I still depend on a computer to decide where I’m going next year. But I think a better way to approach it is to use these opportunities to find out if the programs fit with what I want out of my training. I should be asking them more questions than they ask me. I still need to figure out what questions to ask in order to get the most information out of them, but the more programs I visit, the better sense I get of what exactly I am looking for.

Currently, I’m on a train to Ann Arbor, MI for my interview at University of Michigan tomorrow. It’s a very academic program, which a big focus on research and education. I would be very attracted to this one if it weren’t so damn cold! It was 20 degrees when I left Chicago this morning, and it will only get colder as I travel north.